QSpace Collection:http://hdl.handle.net/1974/5677
Tue, 03 Mar 2015 22:41:55 GMT2015-03-03T22:41:55ZThe Channel Imagehttp://qspace.library.queensu.ca:80/retrieve/23115/Aarssen.jpghttp://hdl.handle.net/1974/5677
Will empathy save us?http://hdl.handle.net/1974/12425
Title: Will empathy save us?
Authors: Aarssen, Lonnie
Abstract: Recent prescriptions for rescuing civilization from collapse involve extending our human capacity for empathy to a global scale. This is a worthy goal, but several indications leave grounds for cautious optimism at best. Evolutionary biology interprets non-kin helping behaviors as products of natural selection that rewarded only the transmission success of resident genes within ancestors, not their prospects for building a sustainable civilization for
descendants. These descendants however are now us, threatened with ruin on a warming, overcrowded planet—and our evolutionary bequeathal, in giving us empathy, may have also given us potential for resolve in guiding cultural evolution for the best interests of humanity. But can the latter trump the best interests of our genes? And if so, now that the liberal copying success of our genes is in conflict with the best interests of a sustainable civilization for our descendants, do the latter risk losing the empathic instinct presently called upon to save them?Tue, 01 Jan 2013 05:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/1974/124252013-01-01T05:00:00ZDarwinism and Meaninghttp://hdl.handle.net/1974/12228
Title: Darwinism and Meaning
Authors: Aarssen, Lonnie
Abstract: Darwinism presents a paradox. It discredits the notion that one’s life has any intrinsic meaning, yet it predicts that we are designed by Darwinian natural selection to generally insist that it must—and so necessarily designed to misunderstand and doubt Darwinism. The implications of this paradox are explored here, including the question of where then does the Darwinist find meaning in life? The main source, it is proposed, is from cognitive domains for meaning inherited from sentient ancestors—domains that reveal our evolved human nature as the fool that it is: given to distractions and delusions of many kinds, designed by natural selection primarily for one essential purpose—to allay our instinctual fear of failed legacy, rooted in our uniquely human awareness that we are not immortal. Darwinism, however, also teaches that genuine legacy is a fate enjoyed only by individual genes. Accordingly, as argued here, those genes with the grandest legacy—and hence rampant within us—are of two types: “legacy-drive” genes delude us into thinking that the legacy can be individually and personally ours; and “leisure-drive” genes distract us from the agonizing truth that it can never be. The most rudimental
delusion of legacy is the perception of offspring as vehicles for memetic legacy—the transmission of resident memes from one’s mind to the minds and behaviors of offspring—
thus also ensuring genetic legacy: the transmission of resident genes, including importantly, genes inherited from ancestors that influence both legacy and leisure drives. Today, legacy and leisure-drive genes reveal their phenotypes across a wide range of human affairs, and together with the phenotypes of survival- and sex-drive genes, they provide a foundation for a novel view of the Darwinian roots of cultural evolution.Fri, 01 Jan 2010 05:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/1974/122282010-01-01T05:00:00Ziee-Author Guidelineshttp://hdl.handle.net/1974/7297
Title: iee-Author GuidelinesFri, 29 Jun 2012 04:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/1974/72972012-06-29T04:00:00ZISE endnote stylehttp://hdl.handle.net/1974/7011
Title: ISE endnote styleSun, 19 Feb 2012 05:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/1974/70112012-02-19T05:00:00Z